Wireless communication devices communicate with wireless networks using wireless protocols, such as Long Term Evolution (LTE), Evolution Data Only (EVDO), High Speed Packet Access (HSPA), and the like. In particular, the wireless communication devices and wireless base stations in the networks exchange wireless signals in these protocols over base station carrier frequencies. For example, a wireless communication device may communicate with a first base station in a first wireless network over a first carrier frequency and then communicate with a second base station in a second wireless network over a second carrier frequency. A device offload occurs when the wireless communication device switches from using the first carrier frequency in the first network to using the second carrier frequency in the second wireless network. A specific carrier frequency in use at a particular base station is referred to as a base station carrier.
Typically, the wireless communication device selects the base station carrier to use based on a prioritized carrier list and comparative carrier signal strength. Unfortunately, the carrier list and signal strength may not adequately account for time-of-day and busy hour for the available base station carriers. To provide the additional time-of-day and busy hour control, time-based offload vectors are generated for each base station carrier to control offloads to the other carriers. In the typical network with hundreds or even thousands of base station carriers, this added control requires hundreds or thousands of offload vectors. The transfer of thousands of offload vectors to millions of wireless communication devices consumes a large amount of network resources.
This amount of offload vectors also impacts the individual wireless communication device. The wireless communication device must receive and periodically update the large data set that the multitude of offload vectors requires. The wireless communication device must also store and process this large data set to use the offload vectors. Thus, the amount of offload vectors also consumes a large amount of wireless communication device resources.